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Tolstoy and the Christian Lawyer

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Tolstoy and the Christian Lawyer Catholic University Law Review Volume 52 Issue 2 Winter 2003 Article 5 2003 Tolstoy and the Christian Lawyer Raymond B. Marcin Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.edu/lawreview Recommended Citation Raymond B. Marcin, Tolstoy and the Christian Lawyer, 52 Cath. U. L. Rev. 327 (2003). Available at: https://scholarship.law.edu/lawreview/vol52/iss2/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by CUA Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Catholic University Law Review by an authorized editor of CUA Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TOLSTOY AND THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER Raymond B. Marcin' It may be that there is no literate person alive in the Western world who has not heard of Count Lyof Nikolaevich Tolsto' (Tolstoy), author of what some have called the quintessential novel among all recorded literature: War and Peace. It may also be that most literate persons are aware that Tolstoy was a moralist of some renown-of great renown in his day-whose pacifist thought presaged and influenced Mohandas K. Gandhi, the great and saintly Mahatma of India. One doubts, however, whether many are aware that Tolstoy penned what is perhaps the most devastating attack in all religious literature on the thesis that a Christian can be a lawyer and remain a true Christian. I. THE PROBLEM We often espouse great ideals in the context of law and lawyering, but whenever we turn our attention to the world of contemporary reality, we are forced to admit that there is something wrong with law and lawyering. We speak of a "litigious society" and shamefacedly acknowledge that we have become one of the most - if not the most - litigious societies in the history of the world. When we ask ourselves why, we tend to assign causation to what are, perhaps, only symptoms of the malady: the glut of lawyers, the "me" generation, or the profit motivation. For these reasons and perhaps others, many people in today's society seem to shrink away from involvement with law. Many others, however, use it precipitously and wrongly - all too litigiously. Lawyers, it is often said, in semi-serious mockery, are generally disliked in our society. It is not easy to identify what is wrong with law, lawyering, and the legal system in general. One is tempted to say that, if only laws were more humane, if legal processes were less forbidding, and if lawyers were nicer, the problem would go away. The problem, however, runs deeper than that. If one thinks deeply enough, one is moved to doubt whether it is simply a problem of putting the ideals of law, lawyering, and the legal * Professor of Law, The Catholic University of America. A.B., St. John's Seminary; A.B., Fairfield University; J.D., Fordham University; M.S.L.S., The Catholic University of America. 1. LEo TOLSTOY, WAR AND PEACE (George Gibian ed., Louise & Aylmer Maude trans., W.W. Norton & Co. 1966) (1922). Catholic University Law Review [Vol. 52:327 system to work. One is moved to ask whether there might be a problem with the ideals themselves. One thinks of law's highest ideal - justice - and is at a loss to think of one recent war or social conflict that was not or is not being fought in the name of that ideal on both sides. One thinks of lawyering's highest ideal - full and fair representation within an adversary system - and is moved to smile wanly at the suggestion that the winning and losing litigants might shake hands in friendship after a lawsuit. From their highest ideals, law divides us, and lawyering exacerbates social wounds. The problem may be that we use law's highest ideal - justice - as a means, rather than seeking it as an end, and the goal of lawyering in our society is all too often victory, when what is really needed is healing. What does it mean to be a Christianlawyer? Does a Christian lawyer help people to stand up for their rights? Does a Christian lawyer help to get recompense for people who have been cheated? Does a Christian lawyer prosecute people who have harmed others criminally? Does a Christian lawyer help oppressed people to resist oppression? Does a Christian lawyer fight against the evils in society? Should not a good Christian lawyer do all these things? Does one have to be a Christianin order to be motivated by sentiments such as these? To depart from the specifically Christian context for a moment, the philosopher Martin Heidegger once retold the following old fable in an effort to explain his understanding of what it is to be a human being: Once when "Care" was crossing a river, she saw some clay; she thoughtfully took up a piece and began to shape it. While she was meditating on what she had made, Jupiter came by. "Care" asked him to give it spirit, and this he gladly granted. But when she wanted her name to be bestowed upon it, he forbade this and demanded that it be given his name instead. While "Care" and Jupiter were disputing, "Earth" arose and desired that her own name be conferred on the creature, since she had furnished it with part of her body. They asked Saturn to be their arbiter, and he made the following decision, which seemed a just one: "Since you, Jupiter, have given its spirit, you shall receive its spirit at its death; and since you, 'Earth,' have given its body, you shall receive its body. But since 'Care' first shaped this creature, she shall possess it as long as it lives. And because there is now a dispute among you as to its name, let it be called "homo," for it is made out of humus (earth).2 2. MARTIN HEIDEGGER, BEING AND TIME 242 (John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson trans., Harper & Row 1962) (1927). 2003] Tolstoy and the Christian Lawyer The poet Juvenal expressed a similar sentiment: From heaven's height a heaven-born sympathy we drew. To us the Maker gave a soul that mutual kindly feeling might us prompt to seek and render aid, and peoples form from scattered dwellers.3 In the minds of poets and philosophers, care, that mutual kindly feeling, is one of the highest qualities in human nature. To return to the Christian context, we all, of course, recognize the euphonious chord struck by John Donne's "no man is an island ....,, We might expect these sensibilities to inform and give meaning to our highest social ideals. Sometimes they do. We think of our Judeo-Christian ideals of care and concern for our fellow brothers and sisters and are bold enough to suggest that the hope of law and lawyering might lie in those ideals. Lawyers should be knights in the right, helping their fellow brothers and sisters to stand up against and oppose all injustices and oppressions. In those ideals, if nowhere else, the hope of salvation from our divisive litigiousness might lie. In those ideals, we may find what has long been missing. Tolstoy would disagree - and would have us believe that Jesus Christ Himself would also disagree. An ethic of care and concern for our fellow human beings is, of course, not the exclusive province of the Judeo-Christian world view. Heidegger's fable and Juvenal's poetic vignette are examples of such an ethic found outside Christianity; indeed, they come in the context of what we might call a pagan mind set. Yet they both undeniably espouse a morality of care and concern. An ethic of care and concern, one must admit, is not an exclusively Christian ethic. What is it that is specifically different about the Christian ethic? Tolstoy saw something deep and profound in the teachings of Jesus - something that can fairly be characterized as unique. II. TOLSTOY'S UNDERSTANDING OF CHRIST AND CHRISTIANITY It might be a mistake to call Tolstoy a Christian, although one can be certain that he would have claimed that title, and there are some in the 3. JUVENAL, THE SATIRES, XV, lines 146-153 (Niall Rudd trans., Clarendon Press 1991). 4. JOHN DONNE, DEVOTIONS UPON EMERGENT OCCASIONS 87 (Anthony Raspa ed., Oxford Univ. Press 1987) (1624) ("No Man is an Island, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent,a part of the maine ..."). Catholic University Law Review [Vol. 52:327 Christian denominations who would happily give it to him. The trouble with calling Tolstoy a Christian is that he quite clearly did not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. Tolstoy wrote: I regard Jesus as the same kind of man we all are, and I believe it to be the greatest sacrilege and an evident proof of heathenism, to re ard him as God. To consider Jesus as God is to renounce God. Such a bold and hostile denunciation must have served some sort of structural purpose in Tolstoy's understanding of theology, but Tolstoy had never fully explained why he felt it necessary to deny that Jesus is God.6 He must have known that a far greater explanation would be expected by the many in his audience who believed the opposite of Tolstoy's words, that to consider Jesus as being God is to affirm, not renounce, God. Tolstoy's bold denunciation of the divinity of Jesus is all the more curious in light of the gentle change of mood in the paragraph immediately following the one quoted above: Jesus I regard as a man, but his teaching I regard as Divine, in so far as it expresses Divine truths.
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